This paper presents a microeconomic argument for the explicit consideration of road safety benefits as valued by individuals in the cost-benefit analysis of road schemes. This argument is shown to apply to any country where per capita income is well above the subsistence level, as it happens in many developing countries, like Chile. The paper also describes the Chilean experience in the valuation of road safety from individual preferences using stated choice surveys. This approach is a superior alternative to the more traditional contingent valuation studies undertaken in many developed countries during the last 25 years. Stated choice helps to address real-market constraints when using hypothetical questionnaire techniques for eliciting willingness to pay for intangibles or non-market goods. Using this approach, the value of avoiding one road fatality in Chile is between US dollars 200,000 and US dollars 300,000. These values are considerably lower than those derived by transferring values from studies undertaken in developed countries, even after proper income adjustment, justifying the need for undertaking local studies on road safety valuation (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see E217780.
Samenvatting